Writing and phonics

[Notcontent]

Background is that I am a bit annoyed at dd's teacher who seemed to suggest that dd's spelling is not great because she needs to improve her knowledge of phonics.

Dd is 7 and her reading is great, as acknowledged by her teacher, but her writing is not as good as her reading. Before Christmas at meeting teacher said that her spelling is letting her down and gave me a sheet with the phonics sounds to practice with dd. But the fact is that there are so many exceptions to English spelling that a lot of it is just memory work. I think that needs to be acknowledged. We have been doing lots of writing at home and I think her spelling is pretty good actually.

I do agree that phonics helps with reading, and helps a bit with spelling, but that's not the whole story, is it?

[maizieD]

They're all phonetically regular, marsha.

[Mashabell]

So the following spellings are all completely predictable?
U can teach children a rule by which they can spell the long oo sound?

Brutal, brute, crucial, crude, fluent, fluid, Fluke, flute, frugal, glucose, guru, intrude, jubilant, July, June, Jupiter, Jury, Juvenile, lubricate, ludo, ludicrous, lukewarm, luminous, lunar, lunatic, plural, prune, recluse, ruby, rude, ruin, rule, rural, secluded, truant, truce, truly, truth, Zulu. Gnu. Bruise, cruise, sluice; fruit, recruit.
Acoustic, bivouac, boutique, coupon, group, recoup, route, soup, toucan, tourist, troupe, wound, youth.
Shrewd, strewn. Brew, crew, drew, grew, screw, shrew, slew, strew, cashew. Clue, glue, rue, true, accrue, construe. Do, lasso, who. Tomb, womb. Lose, move, prove. Gruesome. Manoeuvre. Sleuth. Canoe.
Blew/blue, flew/flue/flu, poo/pooh, shoo/shoe/choux, threw/through, too/to/two, you/ewe/yew.

Baboon, balloon, bloom, boom, boon, boost, boot, brood, broom, cartoon, choose, cocoon, cool, doom, droop, food, fool, gloom, goose, groom, groove, harpoon, hoof, hooligan, hoop, hoot, lagoon, loom, loop, loose, loosen, loot, macaroon, maroon, mood, moon, moor, moot, mushroom, noodle, noon, noose, pontoon, poodle, pool, poop, poor, proof, roof, room, root, saloon, school, schooner, scoop, scoot, scooter, shoot, smooth, snooker, soon, soothe, spoof, spook, spool, spoon, stool, stoop, swoon, swoop, tool, tooth, troop, whoop, zoom. Boo, coo, goo, loo, moo, woo, zoo, bamboo, cockatoo, hullabaloo, igloo, kangaroo, shampoo, tattoo, voodoo, yahoo.

[mrz]

We don't teach rules masha we teach children the alternatives and provided they have seen the written form they can apply that knowledge.

My 5 year olds ask which /oo/ is it in grew is it the same as in my name?

[Mashabell]

My 5 year olds ask which /oo/ is it?

Yes, because the spellings for the long oo sound are phonetically all completely irregular. That's why the spellings for it all have to be memorised word by word.

Phonics is completely useless for learning to spell the long oo sound.

[jaffacakesallround]

Masha when I studied for my diploma in SpLD teaching the lecturer gave the figure of 75-85% of words being 'regular' - ie phonically structures.

You appear to have some gaps in your knowledge so let me teach you:

for spelling regularities and irregularities and found 4,219 with one or more unpredictably used letters, from 'said, friend, head' to 'azure' and 'xylophone'.

words such as head would be learned as a group. There are several ways of making a 'short e' sound: ea is one of them. There is a long list of words which follow this pattern and learning them as 'family' is very helpful.

similarly, azure is the -ure sound. This would be taught as a sound and include: ad/ven/ture, lec/ture, pic/ture, crea/ture.

ok- you might think azure should be pronounced 'ayzure ' (long a sound) but as it's a one-off word it's quite easy to remember.

You are coming at all of this from the wrong angle, my dear :)

Start with the sounds- for example long e, short e, long it. short i, and then look at the letters that make those sounds.

You will find that for most of the time there are thousands of words that conform to the phonic pattern.

I think your problem is that you can't understand this.

[mrz]

No masha it's because the child is 5 and just learning the alternatives ...

[jaffacakesallround]

So the following spellings are all completely predictable?
U can teach children a rule by which they can spell the long oo sound?

This is such nonsense. I can't believe that you think this, yet consider yourself an expert on spelling.

You clearly have no idea at all about how spelling is taught.

RULES are reserved for things like plurals- for example taking the final e off a word before adding a vowel suffix, or changing the final y to an i and adding es ( with some variation depending on vowel/consonant before letter y)

There is no rule about oo.

FGS!

[jaffacakesallround]

Phonics is completely useless for learning to spell the long oo sound.

Masha- the more you post the bigger the hole...

you clearly have no idea at all.

Do yourself a favour love and stop posting. I've read your stuff on here before - why oh why can't you understand?

[merrymouse]

Re: oo, it depends where you live.

I think an RP accent is a hindrance when learning phonics. However I am not quite ready to change my accent to help my children's spelling.

[merrymouse]

Just read thread - thought you were comparing look and boot sounds.

However, I think it is easier to learn words in families than completely randomly.

[maizieD]

Accents aren't a hindrance when learning phonics because phonics is not elocution lessons. You teach to the accent the children have. So, for example, in the North East the 'oo' in 'look' is generally pronounced as /oo/ as in 'moon'. Fine, for a NE child the 'oo' in that word spells that sound, so you teach it as such,whereas for a Southern child it spells /u/ (as in put) and is taught accordingly.

There is an enormous variation in accents across English speaking peoples; these can all be easily accomodated in phonics teaching.

[merrymouse]

When reading I think children can generally figure it out. However in the South 'oo' can rhyme with moon and book and 'a' can be pronounced 'a' or 'ah' for no logical reason and many words have a silent 'r' (car). I think some accents do make spelling easier - e.g. some (don't know if all) Scottish accents.

I am not saying this to be anti-phonics - I think it is the best system for learning to read and spell. However, I think over the years some accents seem to have departed from the rules a bit.

[maizieD]

I think over the years some accents seem to have departed from the rules a bit.

I doubt very much that there was ever a time when everybody spoke English with the same accent. You are still thinking in the wrong direction. When you read you read words in your own accent, not in some hypothetical 'correct' accent. The letters are spelling the sounds that you use. This would apply even if you were reading a language with a completely 'transparent' code (e.g.Spanish) because accents vary.

The 'rules' are that the letters spell your accent, not that they make you abandon it for a mythical 'proper' way of saying the words.

[columngollum]

A predictable problem might be that the word families in someone else's accent might not match the word families in your accent (on account of the fact that you and your neighbours wilfully mispronounce some words.) But, provided that nobody tries to force you (or your neighbours) to use other people's sound correspondences all will be well.

Doubtless some poets are daft too, because their rhymes don't rhyme, as far as you're concerned. (But that's something for the publishers to deal with.)

[columngollum]

Incidentally, that's a way some scholars reckon that they can tell how dead languages sounded, because they can resurrect (supposedly) rhyming verses. I'm not altogether sure of the technique myself.

[CecilyP]

^So the following spellings are all completely predictable?
U can teach children a rule by which they can spell the long oo sound?

This is such nonsense. I can't believe that you think this, yet consider yourself an expert on spelling.^

Jaffa, masha was posing a question (the clue is in the question mark) not making a statement. You may wish to read people's posts more carefully before being quite so patronising in future.

[merrymouse]

history of the trap-bath split

difficulties of the trap-bath split for Americans attempting a British accent including list of accents with and without the trap-bath split.

There is also the foot/goose merger. I couldn't find a reference that related it to fashion, but it certainly makes the spelling rule easier.

[columngollum]

Yes, but as long as nobody starts writing a theory of language based on pronunciation then we're all OK and such things remain interesting footnotes.

[merrymouse]

Also rhotic and non- rhotic accents - whether you pronounce the 'r' in hard and card.

If you have a rhotic accent where use a short 'a' for bath, car is a just another cvc word.

If you have a southern accent (like me) and pronounce it 'cah', there is an extra family of words to learn.

[merrymouse]

It's not an interesting footnote if you are a child struggling to make sense of the rules - it is something else to learn.

I think most children (DD) take this kind of thing in their stride. Some children (DS) struggle with grapheme-phoneme correspondence. I still think that phonics is the correct way to learn - better another word family than a thousand new words learned individually.

However, I do think that some accents make spelling more straightforward.

[columngollum]

The correspondences for spelling (in any accent) are only superficial. It doesn't take long for the spelling of words to deviate markedly from the way in which they sound irrespective of your accent. If you can remember all the phonic rules perfectly then it might help you choose between certain alternative spellings (or families). But it still won't tell you which one is correct.

I've never seen a meaningful spelling argument in favour of phonics. The argument in favour of reading is debatable. But where spelling is concerned phonics is more of a hindrance than a help.

[mrz]

It is if you don't have a clue about how sounds relate to spellings columngollum

[columngollum]

I can just about listen to a stupid theory about how sounds relate to reading. But that's as far as it goes. There is only a slight relationship in regard to spelling.

[columngollum]

Where reading is concerned if people said OK, phonics works well for some words and not for others, in regard to infant reading, and left it at that it would be fine. But trying to spin it out into an all encompassing observation of the English language is just rubbish.

[mrz]

they are the same sound spelling relationship for reading and spelling columngollum